Page 69 of Her Wicker Guardian

Locke is pulling the green shirt into place. “Better?”

The living willow of his throat remains visible above the collar, along with a few small leaves at the base of his neck. His forearms show below the sleeves. He still looks unmistakably like himself, just less like someone interrupted in the middle of splitting wood.

“Yes.”

He pulls down on the hem of the shirt, brushes a few wood flakes from his pants, and heads back outside.

My phone buzzes while I’m still on the porch. Shannon.

Her message asks whether something happened with Locke. When I call her, she says the rumor has already reached her through her daughter, whose friend got some garbled version about Ben seeing a tree man outside town.

That lands harder than I expect. The boy may not even be back at his mother’s store yet, and already someone who has never met Locke is describing him.

Shannon offers to bring Tom and call the others. I head that off. “Not yet. Locke and I need a little room to figure out what he wants now. We don’t need to convene another committee in the yard.”

She doesn’t argue. That may be how I know she understands how serious I am. She promises to update Tom, Laura, and Janet and stay put unless I call.

When we hang up, I finally notice the cardboard box still lying in the grass.

I’ve been waiting for days for that lamp. Friday night, before Locke had a name or a voice or hands that knew how to braid my hair, I told the women I wanted to see that ridiculous red thing glowing in my front window when I came home. It was supposed to mean something.

It probably still does. Just not enough to open the box right now.

I carry it to the stoop near the kitchen door and leave it without checking whether the replacement shade survived. Locke doesn’t ask about it. He returns to the bear instead.

His fingers return to work faster than mine find anything to hold onto, checking the curve of one raised foreleg, removing a length of willow, and replacing it at a slightly different angle. Within minutes, his movements have found their old rhythm.

Mine haven’t.

I settle into one of the folding chairs near the bear with my phone beside me and discover that waiting for Hollis Springs to react is considerably worse than having something to react to. Every car that drives by makes me look toward the corner of the cottage, even though I can’t see the road from here. The first passes without slowing. The second slows for a few seconds before continuing on.

Laura sends a message saying she’s available if we need her. Janet asks whether we need groceries or anything else practical. I tell both of them we’re okay for now.

For now is doing more work than I like.

Nearly half an hour passes before CALHOUN’S HOME & HARDWARE appears on my screen.

I answer immediately.

“Rachel, what happened out there?”

No hello. No small talk. Mrs. Calhoun sounds less frightened than irritated, which makes more sense than anything else about this afternoon.

“Your son came around the side of the house and saw something he wasn’t expecting.”

“He came back here white as a sheet telling me there was a tree man in your yard with an axe.”

I close my eyes. “That’s not how I would phrase it.”

“Good, because I just asked him whether somebody gave him something at school.”

I almost laugh. “He’s not on drugs.”

“He insists he isn’t. But seventeen-year-old boys aren’t famous for reliable self-reporting.”

That sounds like Mrs. Calhoun.

She lowers her voice. “Rachel, was there a man at your house?”